Speaker 1: What does a healthcare data analyst do on a daily basis? Hi, I'm Jen, and I've worked in analytics for 15 years. Now I work as an analytics consultant and help other people break into analytics roles. Let's get into what a healthcare data analyst does. Here's what you can expect in the day-to-day role of a healthcare data analyst. Like almost every data analyst role, the answer to what does a healthcare data analyst do isn't just one single answer. There are many niches within this broader category of healthcare data analysts. There are certainly similarities across all the roles, but the actual work may differ, often depending on who the employer is, defining a lot about what that particular role entails. Healthcare data analysts work for a variety of employers. Hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry may be the obvious answers, but there's also a lot of healthcare data analysts employed by state and local governments, either in general statistics collection, like in the case of Statistics Canada, or in monitoring public health and the performance of different hospitals and providers. Because there isn't just one healthcare data analyst role, the day-to-day work for these jobs can look a little different depending on who you're employed by and exactly what type of role you're looking at. Let's look at four broad categories that fall within this healthcare analytics field. There isn't completely uniform application of titles across the roles, so keep in mind that jobs within each of these major areas may look slightly different from what I'm about to describe. But in general, these are four major categories where you'll find healthcare data analysts and the different specific things that they'll be working on. Let's start with healthcare data analysts working for healthcare providers. Healthcare providers range from primary care physicians to hospitals to even long-term care facilities. In general, these are roles that are very patient-facing. They're having direct interaction with patients that are being treated for a variety of health-related ailments or preventative care. These types of analysts often work with clinical data to help improve patient outcomes, and they also analyze patient data much in the same way that an analyst in any other field would analyze just general data for the company. The data may be specific to healthcare, but a lot of the systems and information that's being used is quite reminiscent of customer data that's held in other fields. Tools that manage electronic health records or EHRs are quite similar to CRM or customer relationship management software, like Salesforce, for instance, in a non-health setting. The second type of healthcare data analysts are ones that work for suppliers. Suppliers cover a wide range of ground. Some suppliers are software in nature, focused on, often, electronic health records of patients in tracking and even potentially analyzing the data that's collected there. Suppliers also involve the pharmaceutical industry, companies that are developing pharmaceutical drugs to aid in the prevention or cure of different diseases. And it also involves device makers. Medical supply companies also fall into this category, and these could range everything from an implanted device to diabetic testing strips to bandages. Anything that could be used in the treatment of any health-related issue or prevention would fall into this category. The supplier category is probably the broadest because there are so many different niches where companies can work, and that's really going to determine what health care analysts in that field do. In general, there tends to be a lot of focus on clinical data here, especially in the pharmaceutical direction. But there's also a lot of applications similar to other roles, tracking supply and demand, collecting data for improvement, and using data to recommend new products or help design new products. Clinical data analysts fall within this category, and they use health care analytics primarily to evaluate the performance of potential new drugs, to model drug interactions, and so much more. These roles tend to be quite a bit different from a lot of other health care data analyst roles, which rely on much of the same techniques and methods and even skill knowledge that are used across all different sorts of industries. I'm going to talk next week just about clinical data analysts because there's a lot to talk about here. The third type of health care data analysts are ones working in insurance industries. These are much more prevalent within the U.S. than they are within a lot of other countries, simply because of the structure of health care, how it's provided, and how it's funded. Health care analysts in these roles can look at a variety of different data. Everything from general trends about what the population that is insured may be experiencing, increasing or decreasing specific health concerns that people are experiencing, and they can also analyze very specific individual patient health risks and visits. Ultimately, insurance companies are looking to minimize their expenses and reduce the cost of treatment. Sometimes this aligns with the best interests of a patient. For instance, when they are able to recommend preventative measures that you can take to prevent health concerns down the road. On the other side, though, sometimes these interests are not aligned. What's in the best interest of the patient, perhaps experimental treatment or more expensive treatment, is not in the best interest of the insurance company's bottom line. It costs them more and a more expensive patient to insure means that they're not making as much. I'm not going to dig into the pros and cons of the industry as a whole, but I wanted to highlight the opportunity of health care data analysts working in this field. That brings us to the last major group of health care analysts, which are those that are working for policy or regulatory organizations. At a federal level in the U.S., this would be organizations like the CDC or the FDA. In Canada, it might be Statistics Canada, but it's also often prevalent in state or provincial governments that are looking to track performance, analyze performance within their certain area. These roles typically concern themselves with understanding the complete picture of public health within whatever area of coverage that they have. Their work often factors into public health programs and hospital or provider ratings. From this work, we learn what health concerns are increasing or decreasing and what populations are perhaps most at risk of different conditions or have been experiencing certain conditions more than others. I mentioned that these are broad titles and the titles aren't completely uniform. While I talk about the role as a health care data analyst, you've also heard me mention health care analysts throughout this video, and similar roles depending on the niche could be called health information management analysts or HIM analysts, health care business analysts, electronic health records analysts or EHR analysts, or even statistician depending on the role. A major question that often arises in relation to health care data analyst roles is do you need a background in health care to get into one of these roles? A lot of this is going to depend on the specific area that you're working in. Like any other field, having some knowledge that's specific to health care or health care supply or whatever the area that you're focusing on, of course having knowledge in this area gives you an advantage. It's subject matter expertise and any company tends to benefit from people that have this sort of knowledge. In some roles, it's going to be less critical than others. For instance, if you're working for a supplier of bandages, then it's not going to be so important that you understand the nuances of specific conditions. You're more focused on general supply and demand. What feedback is there on the product? What things could be improved? What things might be causing issues? So specific health care knowledge isn't as critical in those types of roles. For roles that involve analysis of more clinical data, it's going to be less and less common for you to break into these fields without having some background of health care knowledge. That could be that you've worked as a nurse or a doctor in the past, or it could mean that from an education standpoint, you've taken courses that relate, that help you understand health care data specifically. The more specific that you get to using clinical and very specific health data, those roles are just going to require more previous knowledge to give you a higher opportunity to get into the field. There are always exceptions, but in general, you're going to find it quite difficult if you don't have any knowledge of health care. That's an overview of what health care data analysts do. If you want to know more about clinical data analysts, make sure you step back next week or subscribe and turn on notifications, and you'll get automatically alerted for next week's video specific to clinical data analyst roles. Thanks so much for watching. Transcribed by https://otter.ai